consumerism on booktube

hi everybody and welcome to this discussion on consumerism in booktube i'm marines you're on my channel so you probably know who i am but um i'm here joined by a bunch of my friends who when i sent the messages last week and i was like hey you want to do this like last minute they were all like yes they're already amazing in my book but i'm going to let them introduce themselves and their content on their channels starting with sergeant hi um my name is sajid i'm from the channel books on my social life because books are my social life so yeah uh i can go next i'm daboki i am from okie dokie bookie i talk about books i talk about some science stuff sometimes um yeah that is me and hi i'm paige for minimal bookie um i talk about books and publishing on my channel because that is a caveat of this conversation i am going to be coming at it halfway as a professional and halfway as a booktuber and so this is a conversation i think that is one of like the perpetual ones in booktube like we have like the ones that come up every so often and take turns and uh consume consumerism is definitely one of those ones and for good reason because i mean it's about obtaining books and that's like literally what we do so um i am like it's one of the things that i love talking about too just because kind of tracking how that's changed for me as i started my channel we did a panel on uh booknet fest about this before um which page was on so it's one that every time it comes up i'm like oh yay um but i guess to to set a baseline for everybody can you share with um everyone watching kind of what your how you approach obtaining books or what your rules are for attaining books if you have them what your collection sort of looks like um that sort of thing um i can start but i used to be really strict with how i acquired my books when i first started my channel because i was coming from a place of minimalism when i first started um and i used to use the library a lot more and that way i would decide like what books i bought i really liked them if i really loved them then i bought a physical copy um now more so i do it through ebooks because i have more disposable income since half of the books i buy i do get through work so any book from another publisher that i want i will buy an ebook version first and then if i really really liked it i end up buying a physical copy to like add to my collection there's a couple on here where i was just like very eager to read at the time and i just ended up buying them and then they're still there unread so i feel like most of the time i'm pretty good like i buy books when i really really want to read them and then i end up reading them immediately so it sort of like holds my collection down except for the workbooks which i just i'm gonna drown in one day i'm i'm terrible because i just i have no system i have no control sometimes it's just like i want a book i buy it like that ariana grande song so yeah i mean so i've been recently trying to like coop that because all of my book bind recently has been like on amazon because um buying books down here in trinidad is a little bit difficult sometimes because the bookstores tend to not really have the variety that i'm looking for a lot of the times plus they're very very expensive so it's easier and cheaper to get from amazon sometimes but recently i've been trying to like curb that and to kind of reduce my spending online and trying to support like local independent bookstores as opposed to local chain bookstores so there's actually a bookstore called paperbased in trinidad that sells like caribbean books predominantly so i've been trying to like support them and stuff but i'm so bad at reading books because i don't read like as much as most booktubers i read like maybe five books a month so and i don't buy five books a month i buy like a lot in general so what would happen is i would just buy a book it would go on my shelf it would sit there and look pretty um and it would remain there but either a good while um sometimes i might read it quicker but most of the time the books are there for at least a couple months before i end up picking them up so i kind of need to like work on that yeah my approach to book buying has generally been like i try to buy books that i already know that i love so i usually check out a lot of books from the library um read them if i like it i add it to like a list of books that i'm like okay i love this down like down the road if i'm buying books i'm gonna i'm gonna buy from this list um the the major exception to that is like non-fiction in particular i usually buy because i wanna like read it i wanna take notes like there's a lot more stuff going on there um and also like sometimes i get a little bit lacks about those rules too even with fiction and sometimes to my own detriment sometimes it works out like it's a mixed bag um so i mean there are like principles behind this but also like it's just sheer laziness like i i really hate having to deal with getting rid of books and i really really hate moving books and so like especially when i was like like living an apartment and i knew i wasn't gonna live there i was like i i like just looking at my shelves and thinking like one day you are gonna have to move this was just like okay like that's a good reason to me for me to like not add to it um but like this is also like i've been lucky to live close to good library so like that's definitely helped it out so um they've enabled that and it's yeah it's a mixed bag when i started booktubing i was living with my parents at that time so i was like in my small um you know room at my parents house i didn't really have room for a collection i had some books that had like acquired from like my whole life because i've always been a reader um but then i joined booktube and i did the thing that you do when you join booktube and i just started acquiring a lot more books and but at the very beginning like i have always said on my channel that my rule is that i my collection is books that i've read and loved so i'm primarily an ebook reader or library reader so if i loved a book then i would buy it and put it in my collection and i was saying that and saying that for like five years until this year i was like [ __ ] you're surrounded these are not books you've read and loved like take stock and what has happened here and so i'm like in the middle of like this giant like unhaul project because i i was that idea of like i might have to move came up for me because of the pandemic i lost my job i live alone in this apartment and there was a chance that i would have to go back to my parents back into that small room except for my book collection like you know is ten times larger now so it's like okay thankfully that didn't end up happening but still like you need to not only have a collection for the you now but like for the future you what do you want to own forever and it wasn't what i currently own so i started taking kind of stock of that but in theory what i've always wanted my collection to be is books that i've already read and loved i have no interest in owning books that i haven't read or that i read and didn't enjoy like especially books that i read and didn't enjoy like i get no joy from seeing them on my shelves at all so i think that um as i mentioned that this conversation kind of comes back around a lot within the booktube community and i think part of it is that as every person has their channel like you have to kind of face this as on your own like as you're creating content and then also things change i think as you change as a reader like maybe you're reading more ebooks now like i never read audiobooks when i joined booktube and now i do so that's like a different way that i spend money or that i get it from the the library so i think we're always reevaluating this but apart from like the the single like my decisions like i want to talk about this in like a larger booktube sense like why does it matter this topic of consumerism and you know kind of the other end of that is sort of this idea well everybody's entitled to do whatever they want with their money so like what is what is the larger community context to this conversation of consumerism i mean i think the community has a way of perpetuating consumerism like because i mean you were talking about when you first joined booktube and i think for a lot of us when we first joined the community our consumerism habits changed drastically um i started watching booktube only a couple months after i started reading like for fun because before that i was never a reader and i remember when i first started reading for fun i was okay with just going to the library or borrowing books from friends i didn't see the point in buying books because that was just money to to waste and then i started watching booktube videos and i saw all these nice shelves in everybody's background and i'm like oh i want i want that and then i started to become a little bit more i mean i don't want to be too materialistic but i started to become a little bit more materialistic and i had like you know start i developed a value for the physicality of books that i never had before and that was because of the book community and that's because we have this kind of culture of film in front of your glorious bookshelves and and um you know book hauls and all of these different things which were especially really popular back then when i joined in like 2015. so i think there's like this culture of consumerism that's tied in with the publishing industry and whatnot um and it's very much present in the book community and i think for a lot of people who join the community their our consumerism habits might change because we're kind of assimilating ourselves into this space where the norm for lack of a better way of putting that um is to have many books and to do hauls and to acquire books and to get books from publishers and to you know so i it is of it yes like i understand what people mean when they say well it's a personal thing you could spend your money however you want but like you know you're also taking part in a culture of perpetuating consumerism and that's not a bad thing because i do it too we all do it to an extent but like it's not just a matter of like individuals making different choices it's like it's a very much a culture in our community i think and i wonder like how much of it because you mentioned like arcs and stuff and book hauls i wonder like how much of it is publishing as sacrifices is going to be for me to say because like this is my job i need to make money so publishing is to make money but because like the bigger booktubers get arcs and all like sent free finished copies of books and then they haul them and people end up buying them because they see them it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy like i wonder how much of it is people actually buying books and how much of it is like free books being placed in the community that's impacting our consumerism yeah yeah i a lot of my framing for like understanding consumerism comes from like college like end of high school college years of like when fashion blogs started becoming a thing and this was like really like when influencer was still not a word but like a lot of that stuff was just starting and you're like watching people get free clothes and then you're like i want that thing and like like like there's i think it's part of every internet community like it is the thing that you build a connection around like i got this thing you got this thing we're all so excited we got this thing and we can talk about it you know and so like there's a very like wholesome part of that but then obviously like there's a part of that that is very easy to kind of like derail and also like it is part of marketing like both cynical and uncynical like it is like a natural part of like any community like hobby like you know sewing gaming any of these communities that like any company can come in on and be like cool we're going to drop in some free [ __ ] and like other people will want it like of course that's going to become a part of like how that community like integrates together um is around around the free ship or even the stuff that people are buying yeah and i think that it's so weird to me because like consumerism isn't exclusively a booktube thing like you said it's like any it's like part of internet culture and then we're also engaging in like on youtube but we're also engaging with the publishing industry and there are so many intersections of like where consumerism is influencing but i just feel like any time that this conversation tries to come up that like we're all like oh okay we're talking about this there's immediately not not necessarily from all angles but there tends to be a defensiveness that can shut down the conversation and i think that one it is because it is personal like we're talking about my finances like please leave me alone like i don't owe you and then also like books are really personal i think because it feels less like a like a good and more like an art you know like something that is very much more like i don't know like you invest in so i think that the the reaction is to get very defensive and not to engage with these ideas of how we how we engage with publishing and free marketing and what it means that you know i'm having this conversation we're all having these conversations and we have book stacks visible in our frame so we're participating in some way this thing but that doesn't mean that we can't engage with it also and um people will say like you know oh you don't need books to start a booktube channel and that's true but also if you look at what is most successful that's saying something to the community and it's saying something to people who are joining and it is this is the picture of what is successful and that is always for the majority of time owning a lot of books so i feel like there's a like a like you have to acknowledge that in some way yeah even across like not even just with booktube i think of bookstagram specifically because it's such a visual medium people tend to prefer having physical copies in their photos and so i feel like also with like the props and everything that also perpetuates a different kind of consumerism maybe not even just like with books but with gaining like props and certain setups and like plans and like aesthetics and you see what's rewarded by what gets the most likes what gets the most engagement and then you seek that and you have thing you have to buy everything that's in the photo in order to be successful as well it's kind of funny to me because i think one of the things that i love about books as a hobby is that you actually don't like need to have the new thing for it to be fun like comparing to things like again like makeup and fashion where like there is like there is kind of some value to like new things like books we have this wealth of books from like forever and like many people not everyone like i don't act like this is a universal thing but like a lot of us have access to libraries and so for like at least for me where like it is easy i'm kind of like okay like can i justify acting in the same way with books that i feel about other like consumer activities even though i also value books in a way that like i don't value these other things as much yeah i think that that that you made like several points and i was like okay things that i like going to branch off on but when is it like well also when we start to have this conversation i think people start to generalize and like blanket statement things that it really doesn't take into account the different ways that people access books the people the different ways that people read books the different ways that you or the different means and things that people have you know um even in in terms of we always think like money like you know oh i have the money to but space is like a huge you need like tons of space to own books and not everybody has that and i thankfully also have access to a really amazing library system but not everybody has that and so it's like people want to make these generalities about consumerism but unfortunately it's not one size fits all and like things like you know oh amazon amazon is good or bad but for some people that's the only way that they can obtain books it's like literally the only way that they can and so we just we just never get to the nuanced portion of this conversation that really resonates with me because i was saying before i don't really get the variety that i kind of won sometimes down here so like you know the book community online is very american-centric which is understandable because most people are from north america like who are on booktube so sometimes for like in my experience being from here like all of the books that are coming out especially the new releases they all tend to be like books that we just don't get down here that you know the bookstores don't order them the libraries have books that are like circa 2018 right so it's like it's difficult to like get these new books that are coming out and like yes i could go to the library and read the wealth of books that already exist right and i could read whatever the bookstores have to offer but that's not what everybody else is talking about you know so i think that's another thing too like the new releases and the kind of marketing um that come with them you know like the only way i could really get these books is to buy them online or to buy them from amazon and if i try to do special orders with like local bookstores down here it would just be a lot and i don't even think the libraries or offer um i mean i'm not sure but i haven't heard of like libraries buying books if you request them to do so so like it's it's difficult because it's like i can't get a lot of the books that everybody's talking about that i want to read and that i want to participate in the community conversation with so i always end up having to go to amazon because it's like the easiest medium through which i could purchase books but at the same time amazon is heavily problematic my internal morals just compel me to like not want to support them anymore which is why i've been trying to wean off of them but also books are so cheap and it's so easy to get and it's like a double-edged sword with very sharp sharp points and i feel like it comes from a place of privilege too to be like oh like if you can afford to not shop at amazon that's a place of privilege i can afford to go to my independent bookstores in my community and buy my books from them and it feels wrong to sort of demand everybody else follow your same sense of morality if it's something they just can't afford to do that sort of like classist in a way especially with the discussion around libraries and the idea that i saw somebody in the comments saying that there's an idea that libraries are for poor people in a sense like if you can't afford therefore you have to go to the library and it just feels like people aren't really nuanced in the idea that everybody will be doing in their own way they have their own tier of like this is where i go for books first and this is where it goes second and ultimately if you have to go to amazon you have to it's not on you it's on our freaking capitalist society it's like we're just trying to survive right now yeah yeah and um yeah that idea of like you know you know just where you have access and these all are like barriers to entry into the community and like they're at a very base level it's like you know things that you need access to internet that's a privilege like an ability to obtain books in any sort of way is also a privilege so we're talking about like just basic barriers to get into the community that are like more tangible but then on top of that it's like what we're talking about of like this culture and and and it's not even entirely creators it's like a bigger thing too because haul videos are really freaking popular i don't know if you've ever done a whole video but people are like all about them in like a larger sense too so it's like that like cycle like paige was talking about too about like you know popular booktubers getting arcs and then having more books and then everybody wants the book so it's like we've got a few of these cycles that are at work within the community yeah i just like i put up my first haul video this year which is books i bought while i was high which was like that's the reason i'm doing it because i think it's a fun concept i was watching at the time i was watching a lot of videos about people buying it high and i was like i need to do this for booktube but i like set limits and stuff for myself to be responsible i was like i can only spend this much money and that's all i'm allowed to spend i'm not gonna just like go ham i knew like my own constraints personally and also i did not encourage it in the video i was like please do not do this this is the horrible idea i love the idea of telling your future high self how much you can spend on books i did not press like the checkout button until i was sober to me this is like elevated the conversations yeah and i like i feel like i this year specifically i've been struggling with consumerism because like we're indoors so much like i get the serotonin from buying things online even if it's not specifically books i have bought so much stuff and i've like acknowledge it and i feel like i'm trying to course correct now later in the year but like i still forgive myself for the fact like it made me feel good at the time and right now we're in the middle of pandemic if we can afford to like do this and give ourselves a serotonin you can't judge somebody for doing that yeah i think that that that conversation around self-care and consumerism too is like such a like it's it's such a tricky one to navigate too because it's like uh and i feel like my feelings on it have like changed so much and because it's it gets confounded by so many other factors because like a lot of companies have like kind of co-opted the language of self-care to sell you things again and it's there is that feeling of like i've done totally the same thing where i'm like i'm kind of like i want something to arrive at my household like i would like the feeling of something because no one else is coming to my door like hello but it's also like i've realized over time from making the mistake many many times of like buying something thinking like okay i'm gonna get this thing and i'm gonna feel better like overall like and then just chasing the next version of that feeling by buying a new thing that like for me like when it comes to the idea of self-care in my hobbies like i have to think more about what i'm gonna do with the thing and less about the thing itself so like with the books i have to think about like okay i'm gonna actually read it like the self-care is the reading and sometimes that will involve buying it but like i gotta focus on the reading part first and let the shopping follow yeah and that's part of like the conscious consumerism part of this and like being aware of the choices that we're making like personally also you know and and the way that that is affecting us all um because it is like this idea of what what next and i think that this is from the outside in why people start questioning like content creators as because it's like i just bought these 117 books and then the next video is like i'm unhauling a hundred and twenty books what are they doing so i feel like whether or not people have the right to question you and your content the the fact of the matter is that you're putting out content for public public consumption and criticism and that kind of comes with it and i think a lot of times what people are kind of questioning is you're not reading but we see you buying like that sort of thing and i'm not necessarily saying that people have the right to question it and definitely don't have the right to be like mean to you about it as a content creator but the fact of the matter is that if i didn't want people to like is comment on the fact that i was getting rid of a ton of books i wouldn't have made videos about it or just got rid of them quietly and nobody would have known or when but i made content about it so then i'm i'm sort of inviting um other eyes to be on this process as well and that's kind of what we're doing with halls is that it's not just like a self-care or a private thing i'm also now making a video for an audience and that introduces another layer to this conversation and i feel like oh you can go sajid i was just gonna say and that inevitably paints um you know people's perception of you because like you know if people see that okay because a lot of people don't really have the money to buy books and to do book hauls in the way that a lot of booktubers do so it's like you make a video and like here are 23 books i bought this month people are automatically going to jump to assumptions even though they don't know how hard you work or how you spend your money they're going to be like she bought 23 bucks this month she rich you know so like you know there's always they're always going to like have that perception um of you and then when you're doing the unhauls and you're getting rid of the books and i think that has to do with the fact that i think consumerism has led us to buying more than we read sometimes i could definitely say that for myself like sometimes we buy a little bit more like if i count the amount of books that i bought in a year and then the amount that i read the amount that i read is always smaller so it creates the perception too that you don't read when you do read you just you're buying kind of like supersedes the amount of books you actually read so again people will see that and you know make what they want of it and you just kind of have to deal with it i guess i don't know and i feel like the pendulum sort of switched like very briefly either last year or the year before i think 2018 where everybody was talking a lot more about like minimalism on booktube and like doing unhauls and then those got popular and i think that's why we're seeing both of these together because you get rewards for doing hauls but you also get them for doing unhauls now so you're gonna get both and like juxtapose what your reading currently is so it's like really interesting to see what content has been i feel like halls have become less popular as well i haven't seen as much this year but i think also that's because of the pandemic so that's been affecting video content remember there was a period in time where everybody like before they started calling it unhauls like everybody was saying i'm con marrying my tbr yeah because of that one book everybody was reading i think too like to the idea of like right now because we're in such a weird time like my my like sympathy and like i know how it feels goes out to people who are sort of engaging with self-care as like buying material things whether or not that's like the right way to do it but like i i have felt those feels i have bought those books honestly like during this time but the opposite of that too is like everybody in the community who is seeing this and is coming from a position of like struggling right now like not having jobs not you know things that are so there's almost like a way that halls and unhauling can be flippant i think that is also personal for people and who are having a harder time like in this economy is sort of like the idea of like you know watching these things that you're just kind of like casually and flippantly doing these things without kind of considering the context for other people again whether or not that gives them the right to comment or critique what you're doing i don't know but it's part of your video not existing in a vacuum or the things that you're doing not existing in a vacuum it's part of the community and it's also part of this like larger thing that we're all experiencing yeah and i feel like um my brain just completely turned off but i feel like also present is like my brain turned off twice but it's also about like where you're putting your money when you are buying these things because i think of every dollar you spend is sort of like your vote on what kind of books you want the publishers to be publishing especially at this time during a pandemic when we have way more books than we normally would have coming out in the fall it's especially important for you to spend your money if you're going to be spending this money on the books you want to see like more of more from the authors of because that is how publishers are going to assume like when they're coming for their 2022 list they're going to look at the numbers now and i feel like people often forget that they say like they just think in general their personal library without thinking about the fact that they're actually impacting an entire industry of people and like what power we have within the industry like what books we want to publish but we're not allowed to because there's no proof of concept because of the money being spent rallied guys it rallied i i mean like same cause like i try to i mean one thing that i will say is that my consumerism has gotten a lot better ever since i kind of cool down on reading white authors because like they're like the majority of what's in the industry right so it's like um when i kind of made that active decision to start reading books from more you know authors of color lgbt authors caribbean authors etc etc i kind of became almost minimalist in a way in my book buying like i still you know buy a little bit too much books sometimes but and i still go a little bit overboard sometimes but i think that you know i definitely have like when i first started buying books i was buying everything everybody was talking about so all you know hunger games divergent everything like all the white people books and then i kind of started to realize that okay i need to kind of like get a little bit more you know like flavor in my you know reading taste because because i'm just reading white authors and i think when i started to make that decision to narrow down my choices and be more conscious about what i'm reading i think it kind of con it kind of curbed the bad consumerist habits that i was developing because i just wasn't really interested anymore in reading like i don't know six of crows or something right um that's the name of the book right name dropping everything yeah i mean like you know it's just like after a while i was just like this is i need to read stories that reflect the things that i'm more interested in seeing and and you know um and so yeah i i enjoyed kind of like being a little bit more minimalist with my choices and being a lot more deliberate with where i put my money in this publishing industry and like you were saying paige i think you know if we're going to participate in it if we're going to be problematic capitalists or pawns of capitalism we might as well try to be the best problematic pawn of capitalism we could be unsupported you know definitely support yeah i think that is like such a tough part of the conversation too because like i like part of me is like yeah i want to support all these authors but i still like i personally cannot like like i cannot save the publishing industry right which is not what you're saying but like just in general like i wish i could right like but i i can't so like trying to figure out what that balance is between like supporting the authors that i want to support but also like making sure like i'm not doing it like to the detriment of my personal space well-being and everything and like i think that is one of the great things too about booktube about being part of a book community is that by talking about books like even if you're not spending it like obviously buying the book is like the best thing you could do for the author you're putting like the money directly and they're well not directly but you are putting the money in their pocket um but like short of that like talking about books is a way to express support like interacting with people about them like that is a way to show support for books and so like sometimes i think yeah but that's where all i feel like that's like when it comes to the idea of support too like talking is also useful i feel like sometimes like i totally agree and obviously it's important part of the reason that i want my collection to be books that i've read and loved is because then i then want to support the thing that i enjoyed and like the art that i consumed like that's how i that's my ideal collection but i think a lot of times that when we're having this conversation that idea of like well i'm supporting the industry is like a blanket statement band-aid that goes on top of like not really engaging with how we support the industry and how there's different levels to that and yeah you can support by buying and pre-ordering and all that stuff going to your library support you know because they're buying these books in mass as well and hello you have a channel and you're giving like 100 free marketing to all of these books that you're talking about so you're supporting there as well so as with everything there are tiers here of like support that you can offer a book without necessarily being like making it rain on amazon and doing that 200 book call or whatever it is so you know it's just this idea i think of like actually engaging with your choices and your decisions especially when you're putting things publicly online for an audience and and if at the end of the day you look you take stock and you're like i feel perfectly fine spending this amount of money buying it from amazon putting it online this is fine with me and my conscience you do you boo at least you engage with it like yeah considering it but i feel like there's always like that stop of like not going a step further and really thinking about okay if we're saying that it's for support for the publishing industry what does that actually look like and what are the different ways that we can support the publishing industry and it's like what part of the publishing industry are you supporting like are you supporting the more marginalized people who work in the industry who are trying to make changes but can't right now or are you just supporting the industry in general and just encouraging it to continue the way it currently is like yeah right i'm like and that's something i personally think about when i buy books because i work in the industry and i see the behind the scenes and i like have different discussions about books than we do like on booktube in general yeah and that's such a great thing to extend to like even two libraries like what you're checking out from your library does matter in that way like if like that is another way to support authors that is a way to also establish who you're interested in that's like if you're if you're going to be talking about these books like what you're checking out is still something you're consuming and it's going to drive what you read it's going to drive what you talk about like it's still just because it's free doesn't mean that you like you can just do it mindlessly like we still have to be thinking about it especially if we're doing it in a community yeah because the more books like you um check out like the more demand there is the more they're going to buy copies to keep in circulation versus books that go like unchecked out versus like what's ordered like everything we do impact the industry even if it's like a small little thing here and there like the huge portion of us we do impact it yeah immediately i mean not to be this person but you know you're on my channel so you already know but like immediately we're thinking about this stupid midnight sun book like from when it was announced we were like do not buy this book we are we're in 2020 and we understand that this is like a racist like book like do not do this and then what happened when people were like um donating to the killup tribe and then still buying the book and then like i was just like the message that you're giving publishing is not like yes donate please to you know these native people who have been like taken advantage of basically because of the appropriation in this book but also you still have sent the signal to publishing like this is something that we're going to buy and make successful so like in the larger context of like your dollars mean something again it's like engaging with the choices that you're making and that just sort of like i mean you you don't have to but it's kind of like what we're talking about and it's like i mean i know i'm not the first person to have this opinion about midnight sun but it's like you know you're supporting something that doesn't make any sense she's just rewriting the same book over and over and just flipping the agenda next time we'll have twilight from the perspective of like the mosquitoes like it's ridiculous and might be the most interesting version it just goes to show like you know why why are you putting it why it's like you're creating the capacity for this when you know when people bought life and debt right it's like you created the capacity for something like midnight sun to happen because the publishers don't care if midnight sun is good right they just know that you're going to buy it and they know they're going to make the money off of it right so it's like it just it just boggles my mind that i mean do y'all like twilight that much i haven't read it but like damn she's already discussing writing more books as well so there's an incentive so yeah it's like the publishing doesn't know your dollars are ironic they're not like people bought this but ironically so yeah we still gave you money some authors struggle to get their books published period and then we have stephanie meyer writing the same book over again i mean i guess midnight mosquito pre-order coming out yeah all right i'm gonna start scrolling through comments if there's something that you want to bring up that we have not talked about yet oh man oh man i think people are talking about like pirating yes listen i'm not gonna say anything i'm recapping midnight sun like on stark squad and we had to put like elite for legal purposes we definitely got those legally asked me if i would ever give stephanie meyer a dollar all right let's see what's going on here in the comments um um i would be interested in hearing if anyone has different opinions on how they buy physical versus ebooks some of these are are much older and i can't like pin them here but do you guys find it easier to purchase like ebooks and audio books like sort of flippantly and like give more weight to physical books yeah it's a problem and i've had like a few sessions of like and i've tried i mean i learned from these quickly where i was like i'm gonna be traveling i like i'm gonna have my like my e-reader with me and i don't want to carry all these books i should buy all the books like what if i'm on the airplane and i get really bored and i don't have a book which has never happened to me like since i was like five like when i was five yes going to india it was a long road like not a lot it's a long flight like that was a legit problem but like not anymore and i don't know why like i i still see these books when i go through my e-reader and i'm like you're an idiot like you're like why did you think you were gonna want to read this book and like so i've learned since then and i think dory this is self-directed if you want to if you want to share this with me though i am happy to commiserate because i have judged myself fully and it's not good um and i think especially romance novels for me is like a big one because that's like i'm in the mood for it i just i hear a title and i'm like i i want it right now i'm gonna read it and like that's when we're like oftentimes like yes i actually probably will read it very soon but like it's it's just so easy to buy so many at once and so i'm trying to get better about like checking to see what's on overdrive like trying to be like and and actually asking myself will i read this tonight will i or like should i wait till tomorrow see if i'm still in this mood like yeah it's ebooks are a problem i mean with me it's like a yes and a no because i've never really gotten into the whole concept of buying ebooks until like last year because just prior to that the the the concept of spending money on a book that i'm not getting physically was just no you know especially i still wouldn't even buy an ebook if it's more than like five six dollars you know but like i kind of went through a little phase like at the like end of last year i you know brought my kindle back to life which i had for years but never used and then i started to like buy books and i'm like oh this is fun this is easy i could get books they're not that expensive it's like two three dollars on a book but obviously that adds up and i just kept buying books and buying books and i'm like i had to stop myself on like saturday you're not even reading half of these books but i think what was so great about it was that i kind of you know i liked the idea that okay i could buy these books and then i don't have the guilt of them staring at me from the child's like these books right here let's not talk about them just you know i mean i don't have to deal with that guilt right yeah um you know so it was it was easy for a while but then after a while i kind of cooled down i was like okay you need to stop so now i don't really like ever since the pandemic started ironically i just i don't think i've bought any books since then maybe a couple here and there but i kind of like cut off on the ebooks for now i told myself i need to read like the 20 something that i have on my kindle unread before i read something oh yeah okay well with me and books it's very relative because i don't read as much as most people so like my tbr is just i probably have like 40 or 50 books on my tbr which sounds very modest for most people i guess but for me that's like a lot for somebody who reads like 20 to 30 books a year that's a very um it's a year's worth yeah yeah that's like a year and a half of reading for me so you know it's very daunting and that's what i liked about the ebook it's like you know i don't have to deal with this i could just turn off the kindle put it away and i don't have to deal with the guilt but it's the same thing you're doing essentially you're just not i guess killing as much trees so it's a more environmentally friendly con toxic consumerist habit i guess um but it's interesting too because we were talking uh marinas about like um barriers to entry and the book you mentioned how like overdrive and all these different things like we don't i don't have access to things like overdrive and hoopla and stuff because those are like you know more in sync with like american libraries so it's kind of like you know for people and like you know i don't like to say a third world because it makes us sound like you know but like and people of people like from countries that don't have you know as much library access and ebook access and all this kind of stuff access to audiobooks and stuff like that especially free through the library um it's a lot more it's just a lot more barriers to to stop you from reading and from acquiring and getting all of these books yeah i don't really like i only buy ebooks if i need the book so like for like household i always read the ebook because i don't know if i'm gonna like the book so i'm just like i'll get the ebook it's cheaper in the long run anyway and if i don't like it i can just delete it off of my ipad and that's like the end of it and yeah like that's how i decide if i like really really need a book like very quickly i'll get the ebook version of it just because it's faster and i usually use here in canada we have a company called kobo so i use them over amazon same with audiobooks i have my audiobook like membership with kobo dress as like a way to avoid having the kindle problem yeah i think that part of the reason also that like my collection kind of got away from me is because when i started booktube i was reading a lot more physical books and now i'm primarily an ebook reader like i i enjoy reading from my ebook more than i enjoy reading from physical books at this point so if there was a like in the transition there was a point where i was just like i'm like inundated with unread ebooks on my shelf from like a few years on my kindle from a few years ago so the two things that i had to do in order to like curb this when i was like you are like these were physical books like you would be drowning right now so one was that i disconnected the one click buy like i just i cut it off i turned it off deleted all of my information i am not able to one click buy anything and two was that i started instead of putting holes at my library because i would put holds and i'm very like i'm a mood reader and then i would get the hold and be like i don't want to read that anymore that was like you know a month ago um so now i just go through my available now on my app and see what's available right at this moment and i'll just scroll and scroll until something catches my attention borrow it and if i read it right then great and if not it's like no i'm not but again that's an access thing which thankfully i do have access to like overdrive and stuff so i'll just kind of do that instant gratification of available now versus putting holds and i find that it curves that like want to purchase ebooks and whatnot all right um more questions uh let's see have any of you ever implemented a book buying ban if so how did that go for you what rules did you set back i think i just did like at the beginning of my channel i was like i can't buy any book that i haven't read at the library first because like that was my like stipulation going into creating booktube channel i was like i'm going to stay a minimalist i'm not going to let it obviously work minimalistic yeah that was like originally my name before everybody just kept calling me minimal bookie and i was like i'm just going to change it because nobody remembers it's minimalist booktuber but yeah like that was my stipulation and i feel like i pretty much stuck to it this year's been a weird year but like normally i try not to buy a book unless i've already previously read it and like that's my band sort of stipulation yeah at the beginning of the pandemic i kind of went on a bit of a ban because um the the borders had kind of shut down and so like when i order books from amazon they don't come directly here i have to use a freight company and they get it in the states and they bring it here so i was like i don't want because the free company had stopped for a while but amazon kept delivering and i didn't want them to just keep delivering to people and then my books were like somewhere that i don't know sitting down waiting for me to maybe get them one day probably not so i was like okay i'm gonna stop like ordering and i think i went like a good three or four months without buying any new books whatsoever and then come me like when things got a little bit better i just i think since then i probably got like maybe 30 books or so or a little bit more yeah more since then so i mean i don't know if the book ban ban did anything because i stopped buying books for a period of time but like you know with a book buying ban you the ideal thing is you'd want to learn a lesson from it so that when you go back to buying books your habits change but i don't quite know that um that was a habit change kind of book buying ban it was more like a i don't really have much of a choice so i'm just not going to buy anything for no kind of book buying ban a book buying ban can be like crash dieting like you hurt yourself for a while and then afterwards you're like i'm not making you know um i've never done it because i just know myself and i know if i tell myself do not but you're not allowed to buy books my brain's gonna go bet and it's gonna be hard for me yeah that's just how i'm wired so it's not something that i would ever do yeah i think the extent for me has just been having the same rule the page was talking about and the times i've broken it seventy percent of the time i've regretted it i think that's easier for me because i um as i said i kind of wanted to like cool off on amazon so i told myself okay no more amazon purchases for like the rest of the year and i think that that's something that i could manageably do because i have the use the other um the bookstores down here so it's not like if i'm completely shutting it off but i think maybe what i have to do most is sort of change my habits as opposed to just completely banning the book buying we from lala she says whenever this topic comes up as it often does and hot takes a rise i always wonder who that person or group is hoping hoping to influence with their discussion so when we're having this discussion like who are we hoping to influence or what like is the purpose of talking about you know consumerism in the booktube community i always come out as a from like a place of like i just want people to be more conscious when they're making these decisions like i just want people to think more about the books they're buying because their products and yeah they're products but there's also like an art element to it and there's humans behind the book as well that you're supporting or not supporting specifically the authors like above everybody else and i feel like we just sometimes we can lose like sight of that fact of it it's like not like buying a like lipstick or something there's like a lot more nuance to buying a book i feel like that we don't talk about yeah i think one of the hard things with books is that it's so easy to like make them into a really precious thing and like when you do that like i like i think books are precious but also like at the end of the day they are still a thing and like figuring out how to sort that is really hard because like we all like presumably love books and like they're it's so hard to talk about books in a way like unlike makeup where you're kind of like yeah at the end of the day they have something to which i need makeup like is a society thing but i don't need as much as i own right like that is my problem um but with books like we have like collectively there's like a mentality of like the more books you have the more educated you seem the more it seems like you care about the world like there's a lot of fetish ways that we talked about books and for me i think like talking about my own habits is really just a way of processing like what is it that i feel about my own book buying habits against all of that because at the end of the day like there are things about books that i think are precious or sacred but i also want to like engage with it then in a way that's respectful to like my own relationship with them yeah and i think that conversation is a really good way of like changing those things within a community remember when i started like booktube nobody really or for the most part the most visible people were not doing like negative reviews and the sort of thing that were like kind of perpetuated throughout the community was like think of the author like that author has like children and it was like a really weird thing in a way that it was like this not how this works you know you don't go to like a restaurant and not give a bad review on yelp because the chef has children so there books and authors and writing but i think that in having a lot of conversations in booktube about critical reviews negative reviews we've sort of like changed the direction of how we think about that so i feel like conversations about consumerism can change the way that we all process this sort of like communally and hopefully like people do become more conscious like in individually but for the most part i also really think about people watching who want to join who have that idea of like well i can't which when i did a thread on twitter there were a handful of people who responded and said i've always wanted to start a booktube or a book blog and i haven't been able to because i don't you know i don't own books i don't buy books or things like that and i know it's like sort of a thing that we just want to be like well that's not true but it's part of what we're perpetuating as a community so i feel like the more we talk about this the more we make clear like you know we're all approaching this from different backgrounds from different means and everybody curates their collection differently but you don't need one in order to do this thing the more we say it hopefully that opens doors for people to join um this person says i'm curious why booktubers don't take a stronger public stance on supporting libraries or improving access to books i feel like a lot of people do talk about borrowing from the library that i follow but probably that's more recent because i've been more conscious about the people that i follow i don't know i feel like if that's like something that you want to see that there are people out there that are talking about it um people do library hauls i see them like pretty frequently as well and like for someone like me i try to remember to say when i've read the book from the library but usually i'm just talking about them all together but i think just maybe talking about it is like making sure that we're pointing that out is like another way that we can start to like shift culture i don't really thought about it because most of the books that i talk about are probably library books and i've never been like huh how do i or i've always been like okay like i don't have a book to show i don't like i don't have a way to register that like in a public way um yeah i don't have anyone going with that i'm just thinking out loud i wonder if it's because like it starts as like a hobby so people don't feel like they have to be taking stances they it feels almost like they don't realize it's a platform to be sharing things that they believe in as much as it's like we're just talking about books so like here are the books and rather than like this is where i got them from and this is why it's important that i'm supporting libraries and that kind of stuff i mean it's interesting because i also noticed like like when i especially when i first started booktube like people would often feel like they have to have the book to show in in the videos so like if they don't have the book they often kind of come with this explanation well i don't have a physical copy because i had to borrow this from the library so i'm putting up a picture here and i would always be like just put up the picture and talk about it oh that's such a good point it's like normalizing the way that we talk about it instead of like it being like the you know oh oh no i went to the library just like making it a normal thing and yeah just put the picture i mean i think it's a good idea too to maybe just mention it and say well i just borrowed this from the library and just talk about the book as opposed to like sort of it's almost felt like i mean i don't see it as much anymore but it almost felt as if people kind of like felt like they needed to explain i'm like you don't need to explain this was from earlier in the in the live show so they they might have changed their mind but dana is offering to personally deliberate books okay i love being she's amazing y'all should go like subscribe to that channel like um i i would i would be okay with that you know i wouldn't refuse um one for the book says people are more worried about defending themselves than identifying the bigger problems with consumerism which we kind of talked about how this becomes personal in any time that you're discussing books like negative reviews or anything that has to do with decisions i think that you know it is personal for a lot of people and so it's easier to like process it on a personal stance instead of like engaging with like the larger things yeah because people will feel like because people are discussing something that maybe specifically it's a personal attack versus like a community discussion and i feel like sometimes it's like the way we discuss things if it happens on twitter i just take a step back and just read everything and i try not to engage as much in that community anymore because i feel like a lot of the conversation is like very polarized like this is right this is wrong and then like people are discussing why they believe what they believe without like trying to come to a common ground yeah i miss the days of like the when you could do like a what was what does it even call the video replies no i just said i was just showing my age you're you're i'm very fun for marinette i would be everywhere respond to you i don't know a lot of people were talking just in general about like used bookstores do you any of you guys buy used um or do you have access to like a good used bookstore where you are i recently went to a used bookstore and um i actually included like a vlog of the go into the used bookstore like in my book haul in my last book haul um so that was fun we have a lot of used bookstores in trinidad that's one thing um there's even this one like book shack on the beach called the book junkie it's amazing it's like this cute little shack and it's this old old man and he just takes a bunch of used books and he sells them and it's like it's like a it's it's just so cute so we have a really good like culture of like used bookstores and stuff down here like that's something we we don't have to worry about like not being in existence because everybody wants cheap books so yeah yeah yeah that's something i missed about barbados girl like i used to have a book like a used bookstore right across the street from where i would catch my bus i would always go like after school right before i went home um there's a couple there's like a chain in the city where i live that you can go to but like i generally because i work in publishing i generally have a wave like i get all of my workbooks because i have to take photos of them and i get to keep which ones i like so i feel like i don't really go to bookstores in general i order a lot of my books online even if it's from my indie i will order it online and get it delivered to me just for like a convenience thing yeah in boston when i was when i was living in boston um brooklyn booksmith if anyone lives in boston highly recommend they have like both the new bookstore part up top but like downstairs have a really great use book section um that was pretty awesome uh but i also like find used bookstores so hard because it's like you see it it's so cheap and i'm always like oh like that means i can buy everything doesn't mean that yes but i do love used book stores that's like like when i have my list like that's like why it's been good for me to have a list of books like on my phone like okay when i'm at the used bookstore these are the titles i'm looking for and um i think it's it's cool to like when i did the video i had i included a clip of like the front of the bookstore with their phone number and where they're located and stuff so if people in the area and they want to go visit they could do that and i think that would be a cool thing for youtube booktubers to kind of include in their content as well like encouraging people to support because as much as we clearly we have influence when we buy all these books and we that has an impact on the community so if we're conscious about talking about going to the library and going to use bookstores and supports in indie bookstores and whatnot you know if we could create that culture because we do have the capacity to do to do it if we want to um that would be really cool too because then we'd kind of be shifting the consumerism habits i guess in the community yeah and i miss like the whole like when you go to used bookstores you're generally just like browsing to see what they have as well because they won't have like all the titles that are just like recently released so i miss like that element of like exploration and finding new things like without all the marketing that like goes behind what you generally would find on like the best seller list yes yeah i'm gonna highlight this comment basically to also ask you a question that's gonna um call you out like whatever the book says and the thing is everyone jokes about buying more books than reading them but when it's time to have a serious convo everyone's silent and i think sajid you mentioned a little bit already about like your your tbr but what is kind of your breakdown or like ratio i guess right now like books that you own and have read to like unread books like how how is your collection divided um well i mean well this first shelf is like all my e-books well most of them and these ones are unread but most of them are red these all of my red adult books these are my unread adult books which this is my shelf of shame i would say i own about maybe like 100 or so books and it's very 50 50 i think um maybe like 45 55 like but that's because i get rid of books very frequently and i'm also get rid of the books that i've read this versus the book that i haven't read because i have one five level bookcase and i just don't have the space for a lot of books and i'm like if i'm not going to reread something or if i don't have a very very strong sentimental attachment to it it's actually quite easy for me to get rid of the book i've gotten rid of signed books like i had a signed book personalized from a man book or author and i gave that away just the other day to my friend because it's like if i'm not going to reread it or if i don't have that sentimental attachment i'm just not going to keep it so it might seem bad like when you look at my shelves initially that more of my books are unread but that's because i'm just more inclined to get rid of the books that i've already read versus the ones that i haven't so that's kind of part of why it's like that but also because i you know have i go a little bit overboard with the buying sometimes yeah the shelf behind me is my unread shelf so all of these books are books that i haven't read um but i like i said i get physical copies of books for work so i get to keep whichever ones that i do want to end up reading and then i get rid of the other ones i bring them back to the office when there was an office right now i'm just drowning in books in general but of like books that i bought personally that are on my tbr i only have like 30 and i that's about like maybe 20 of my overall like owned books that aren't work related yeah yeah this is my tbr stack but this is mostly like there's like a stack of library books back there and then like i think the rest is the stuff that i bought um sorry i'm like just managing my mess on camera but um yeah i think i don't know what like my total number of like books that i own that i haven't read i would guess it's somewhere around like the 10 to 20 range but part of the reason so like nicole and i have been doing a nonfiction book club and part of the reason is because we have these well i can't speak on her behalf but on my behalf definitely part of the reason is because there are these non-fiction books that have been on my shelf that i'm like i need to read these it is very embarrassing that i have like been wanting to read them forever and so like this is a way of like doing accountability we're like okay we're gonna we're gonna read them so my my like total number of books that i haven't read is slowly starting to decrease yeah i yeah i mentioned that i started doing this project because um one i was overwhelmed with the number of books that i owned overall and i wanted to cut that down down but two my like collection became something like 50 50 of unread books and red books which is i'm still sick thinking about it for me personally like i said because it's not how i wanted my collection so i've gotten it down to these three shelves yes these three shelves behind me are all books that i've read and have been rated three stars or higher or like sentimental value or something that i would reread so these are all books that like i love that i want to keep um in some way and then right now i think i have like 75 unread books and that was like a lot more um and so the idea is that these are the books that i'm going to read now um but i what i'm finding is that like the more that i do it the more i'm like i'm not gonna keep all these books like more of these are gonna go so yeah we'll see how it goes yeah i've like started doing things on my channel where it's like i'll read a certain genre for like a week and i feel like that's been helping with my teeth like i already have a couple books that have come off the shelf because like i once there's like a goal for my reading and i have like a purpose for reading it's very easy to pick books off of the shelf versus like i'm in a mood what do i want to read and then looking at all these books like i don't know yeah okay this uh says i feel like people are allowed to spend money on whatever they want it's nice to buy a book because then you can take your time getting to it and not worrying about returning it to the library i need that urgency yes give me a due date i mean like for me it's like with our library at school the overdue fees are ridiculous so it's like you need to read the book before you send it back but like the public libraries are different it's literally 25 cents a week yeah 25 cents tt is like probably less than 5 cents u.s so it's like when i borrow books from the main library i keep them for months i give them so i don't have that self-control when i borrow books from the main library i have a friend who i think she kept her books for almost like a year and a half before she ended up returning them like because they just i don't know why they try they don't they barely charge overdue fees so that's just my particular thing with the library here but in general i will say that like sometimes i understand the pressures a little bit overbearing especially because i take a long time to read books and especially like when i'm when i have a schoolwork and stuff i might take six weeks to read a book but i have to retain the books for school within like three to four weeks so i'd often find myself end up like dnfing books because i have to return them back to library so i understand that pressure but i also think sometimes the pressure could be really helpful like you know you have that due date you need to get it done um it's just you know you kind of have to have the self-control i think to be able to finish the book in time to send it back i think dude when we were having the conversation recently about like um reading for fun versus reading critically or whatever i got to a point where i was like oh like we're talking about two different things here like different portions of the community because some people were straight up coming out and saying i don't want to read critically i don't i don't even want to do reviews i'm not a book reviewer and so in my head i had this moment of like i always equate booktubers with both reviewers but that's not necessarily true you can be a book hauler and still be a booktuber you can be you know any sort of number of like different things that we do and you don't have to be a book reviewer but i was approaching it kind of assuming everyone was a book reviewer and so i think that that there's a level of this assumption too of like if if i am purchasing a book it is because it is with the intention that i would like to read it where i feel like there's a separate thing of people who just like to own books with no intention of ever reading them it's like a throw pillow for them they just buy a ton of throw pillows and so i think that that's probably different but it's not i don't think where this conversation is necessarily coming from um it's sort of a different kind of consumerism topic or whatnot and i don't know yes everybody is allowed to spend money on whatever they would like but that is the bottom line and we are agreeing with that but that also that doesn't stop conversation from happening and from like we are seeing more conscious decisions from happening and things like that so yeah like we said earlier like everybody can spend their money how they want to but they can't ignore that their money is going to have an impact regardless of if they meant for it to or not yeah let's see what else we got lots of love for the library in the comments i love it my library card expired and there's no way for me to get it renewed so we're here i lost mine i'm not in mine so i have to go get like a new one yeah and the library is closed it's like killing it in the comments right now the thing is people also advertise book calls with the idea that they bought too much so we sort of glorified over consumption and this is i mean even with how we see like how we title the calls and like the thumbnails and stuff and it's like huge massive book yeah right i mean that's the thing is that i'm not calling any specific person out i mean i think i've done book calls like that too with the same thumbnail but it's like this idea of like what we glorify and sort of the norm of like you know over consumption or buying more than we need or having more than we need sort of thing and like when you put specific numbers in like the titles you see more clicks on that because people are like what are these 90 or like 100 books that people are yeah i mean like for me with my last book haul like i had like around 30 books but that was like after like four months of book buy-in but then you'd have people who have like a haul every month and they have like 40 books so i think that it's different depending on the individual booktuber as well and like how often they buy yeah let's see there's another part of this i'm like i don't have a question but i just want to throw it out there which is like how arcs fit into all of this because i think arcs are like a really funny part of like how we do consumption on booktube like they're both kind of like a status symbol sometimes they're also like a thing that like people like like will stress over neck alley and edelweiss and like it's like why do we do this to ourselves like that kind of feeling um yeah i don't know if you guys have thoughts about it i just wanted to throw it out there as another part of the so i think a lot of the books that i'm unhauling um are books that were sent to me by the publisher and so now i have these arcs that i'm obviously not going to sell or anything like that but i have to get rid of in like different ways and i think it goes back to this idea of like when we first joined booktube that you're like buy books and it's like sort of the natural reaction to the culture but when you first get big enough um that publishers start reaching out to you i think that there is a sense of like kind of forging in on that as well because there was a while that any time anybody sent me an email i was like you know me yeah i'll accept you yeah what are you gonna send me twilight but aliens it's fine yeah i was not being picky at all i was just like so happy that it was happening that i was not being a conscious consumer and so i ended up with all of these arcs that i never read and you know i i even went like on a whole spiel about bea and how the first time i got back from ba had all of these arcs just because i got swept away in it so i definitely understand how it happens to people and like i've been on this community for five years so i've had like that whole time to kind of contend with it um but yeah the ark thing is like definitely a big part of it and the culture of arks in this community is a huge thing because you know people push it and glorify it and like i read it and i i know what happens and i have all these feelings so that feeds into it as well because like since i work in publishing like arcs to me i was always too small to get them before i started working publishing so now they're like they're not a big deal to me because i have access to them through work and like i still there's still books that i've requested on night galley that i really want to read but like i know i'm just gonna buy a physical copy if i don't get it like whatever i don't like have the urge to read it before everybody else in part because like i read by mood and i probably wouldn't get to it before the release date anyway but yeah i feel like even publishing houses sort of take advantage of the whole like exclusivity of having arcs and stuff and they really want to hype books that way so it's not even just like the community itself it's self perpetuated because the industry is making it seem like a lot bigger of a deal than i feel like yeah yes hannah i just saw this comment i think you're talking and i'm like yes yeah yeah hannah and i had a full discussion about the industry that i just posted today check that out i'll put it in the description with like ox i kind of went through a phase like when i went through with the ebooks like i was like oh this is a thing that i could do now because like i got to a point where i could actually email a publisher and they'll reply to me and i'm like you you answered my email and you want to send me this book so yes send it to me so i think there was a period and time where i took like about three or four acts um and then i realized i wasn't reading them in time i was trying to rush them down before the day they were released and all kind of stuff and then i told myself i have to be realistic about what i read so now if a publisher approaches me i wouldn't request a book unless i really really really really badly want it and can't get it and if a publisher approaches me and i know this is not something that i'm going to read like twilight with aliens then i'm just going to say this you know what no i'll just sometimes even ignore the email like you know yeah somebody asked in the comments i saw like um do you buy physical like a finished copy of all the arts that you end up reading and liking yeah i don't like well obviously like the arcs i get her through work like i just keep the copy and i don't bother like i'll give the finished copy i get to a friend rather than have two copies of the same book on my shelf unless i like love the book like daisy johnson the six is one of the few like double copies of my own the only time that i would think that i would do that is if it was a book from a marginalized or like creator that i wanted to like monetarily support but since publishing doesn't send me those books anyway really it never has happened to me yet um but yeah if i like an arc that i received i'm like cool generally keeping it and unless that specific circumstance yeah i mean for me i did that with all-american muslim girl by nadia and julie courtney because i loved that book so much and i thought it was just incredible um and i just really wanted the pretty final hardcover copy so i bought it but i gave away my arc so i wasn't going to just have two copies of the book i gave away my act to my cousin who i know would love that book um and i did get sometimes the publishers also offered to send me final copies um so what the hana was and would love for me to see i got final copies that the publishers sent to me so you know it's like otherwise though i wouldn't really rush to buy a final copy if i have the act this comment is kind of out of context but there this person is talking about like tone differences and comments that people have like addressing some of this stuff so i do want to make it clear that i think that people can be overly familiar with content creators they can be insulting they can be rude and so like there's a difference between like hey let's have a discussion as like a community and people being mean to you in in the comments and we did a booknet fest we i recently have a video on my channel about like moderating your space and you have every right to moderate your space and your comments in any way that you need to in order to not have it be negativity under your your facing your video and i 100 believe that and i do think that people can be a little bit like calm down like you know this is like a community thing but like i said you're you don't you're not privy to my bank account and i'm not showing you receipts so there are boundaries that you need to draw and like lines that you can draw as an individual and that's sort of different than like as a community talking about high-level sorts of things and some people definitely do use like the guys of us trying to have like a productive discussion about things as a way to just be really shitty toward other people because it's their excuse to finally be able to do that right yeah do you think once you start like speculating about people's finances and their well-being based on their consumer habits and like i will talk openly about how my consumer habits affect me and my well-being i am not remotely qualified to like assess how other people's life and punching habits are affecting them and and like i said we're putting things up for consumption and so that kind of you know it is what it is but people i think assume too much by like this i i showed you a 20 minute video like i didn't show you anything else and there's so many conclusions that people can jump to that i think is also like not not the thing not healthy in a lot of ways so there are two sides of this of course and i i don't want to come across as like you know well you made a video so you know accept the abuse because that is also not it like like i said moderate your spaces get any negativity out of there as you can and that is different from conversations happening in the community i just got to the pirating comments fun yay that's another discussion that comes up quite a bit i feel like on book twitter someone asked um books and lala this uh desiree did how often do you get unsolicited arc so i know this is directed at lala but i'm gonna ask how often you get unsolicited arcs to the arc is when they just send it to you right without even knowing yeah now that ever happens to me like they'd either email me first or i would like beg them like i don't nobody sends me like things unsolicited i don't think people have my address like that they have to happen it happens a lot like when publishers don't have like a set blogger program i feel like if it's just like publicist sending books to people who they happen to have on a list it happens a lot more and it's been part of discussions behind the scenes that we've been having about like because i see like i see us discussing like i hate getting unsolicited arcs and i go back and i'm like they hate getting unsolicited art please let's stop doing this yeah keep talking about it because people will see you having these discussions and hopefully something will stick but you're just like the little publishing spy in the booktube community but i haven't i did not know that this was like a thing like that or just kidding oh that's so yeah i get unsolicited arts um not not like a ton i think uh lala said she got at one point she was getting like 20 to 30 a month which is wild to me but just so often if i'm like on i'm on a list for publishers and for the most part they will just reach out to me and say hey are you interested in this but they if they're pushing something like kind of like blanket they'll just send a book uh or like a box full of like a different different selections of books and i'm like i didn't ask for this so yeah yeah they've been we've been thinking a lot more about like the impacts of printing arcs and the wastefulness of it so there have been like productive discussions at least where i work there have been productive discussions about like moving more toward eric's and stuff like that and sort of considering like are we spending the bet our money the best if we're printing all these and just sending them willingly to people who might not be interested um my comments are kind of being weird right now because i we got behind and i was scrolling through so if you have anything that we didn't get to like any questions here um just please put them down here again so that i can see them pop up new but um anything else that you guys can think of that we didn't get to cover about like this conversation that you usually see about consumerism hmm my brain was just like no he was like done like so much how we didn't even get like the chance to touch on yeah as daboki said like on our bnf panel it's after you close and we're like okay log off close it you're like dang it what we need to do is like close it and everyone has a secret stream of us and that is everybody come back in 10 minutes for the after show sylvia asked an interesting question i think um they said i'm skeptical of people who get book subscriptions for free yeah so are you really um going to say you hate the books if you got them for free or if you're getting sponsored for me it's like if you send me a book i've never been sponsored to talk about a book but like if you send me a book and i don't like it i will say sorry i didn't like it you know it's just a fair thing i think yeah it's not gonna negatively impact you if you are sent a book like for free you are allowed to give if you don't like it you're allowed to give your own opinions and that won't stop publicists from sending you books at all because it's free and that is literally your job is to get free publicity for the books so like never be scared if you get a free book to talk about it whether you liked it or not i've never also been sponsored for anything but i also don't have a lot of access to like book boxes in canada and i've never seen like i've never liked the idea of somebody sending me a book and i don't know what the book is no thank you i would rather like i'd rather it be like a like a book of the month i think you get to choose like if we got that that'd be great but like we don't have any sort of boxes i think oh crate is the only one off the top of my head that i know of and bad press is still press i mean american dudes are still doing well like i saw that book i saw that book in our book store down here like you don't see half of the caribbean books but they had american dirt on display and i'm like wow i think that a lot of people and this is probably another one i'm just going to invite you guys like everybody about like um you know the role of publishing and like money stuff on booktube and i think a lot of people have the the idea that when publishers reach out they're like hey can you give this a good review or like can you read this when most of the time it's like hey here's a book please just like mention it like you know if you just take a picture of it and all they really want is like name author where you can buy the book and that's like yeah the only real expectation that they approach you with i'm sure that there are some and especially as you get bigger that they want a little bit more from but sort of at this level i think where we all are they're just looking for exposure they're looking for that free press of you being like hey here's this book and if i say here's this book that is like you know enemies to lovers and he wants to kill her but also bone her and i hated it but there's like a hundred people watching this maybe more that are like that sounds amazing fold that book to them you know um so it doesn't really matter especially i think if you're the type of person that can talk about like hey here's why i didn't like it but here's why you may like it it's not really an expectation what i'm getting when i'm personally getting these books for review that i have to say anything positive about them yeah i'd have to check with my friend who writes in ads but i also don't think we are legally allowed to ask for like pay for a good review i think that's like illegal we can't solicit good reviews what you see it's just like the book like oh this is a book this is what it's about it's out this time rather than like this book is amazing usually that comes from like the actual person again i don't know if that's true but i feel like somebody has said we legally cannot request that this is getting long but people are still asking questions maybe you guys are still okay half a bottle of wine we can keep going i did a heavy pour for that reason it was like up to here so i feel like i need to request like please send me my beer yell pick yourself a mute and yell you guys are just going to see a hand come in so bethany says do you have any thoughts on the potential environmental impact of book collecting i mean like for me as i said i get rid of books like very frequently like i unhaul books all the time um just within the past couple months i probably on haul over like 50 books or so um uh or maybe even more and for me it's just like you know i don't have this space but i'm also very conscious of the fact that these are reusable items books are reusable um in the sense that you could read them over and over again until they fall apart right um which maybe never so i i i always think about that i'm like if i don't have these strong sentimental attachments and if i'm not going to reread it i just pass it on and i think that that's the best way to do it sometimes i mean i'm not comfortable with telling people what you should do with your collection but i think you know there comes a point where we all could kind of like be honest about what we have on our shelves and the fact that we're accumulating a lot and that actually contributes to um you know environmental degradation when you are one person you have this one book um and you you read it once and you have it for years when that book could actually be read by multiple people at a library or could be passed on to multiple different people you know as opposed to everybody having to buy like the book like one individual copy for each person you know so like i mean i guess i kind of straight away because i was it was about the environment but i started talking about unhauling but like i think it's i think it's i think you're connected no no yeah i always come into these consumer discussions thinking about all of the clothes that i bought and got rid of and it's like just like looking at these that bags of stuff that i would have in my apartment to get rid of it's just like it's hard to separate the fact that it's like oh i like this is a thing that has gone through cycles of manufacturing of like industry like there's a lot of stuff that's gone into it and like i cannot again like i can't fix the in publishing industry i can't fix the environment like but i can think about the ways that i'm buying things that like impact to some extent the way these things are operating and like i think it's hard when you like there's that bigger picture of like the world is falling apart and part of the ways it's falling apart is the climate and then also like there's also the individual behaviors we're doing there's the systemic issues at play like if we think about the big picture all the time it's like really overwhelming and of course my individual actions seem so minute against all that like what i really want are for like corporations to change their behavior but like what is also within my power or like are my own values or principles i guess i i should say that more emphatically and i think especially with a lot of conception conversations like what i've learned from other people who i think are better about this is like the idea of trying to like live in a way that is as consistent with your values and principles as you can get you're not going to get 100 but like the extent to which you can like is worth trying i think about how um when like ebook conversations like crop up which they don't as much anymore but um they used to all the time part of the thing that i would always hear is like you're killing the publishing industry with your ebooks and stuff like that so it's always really hard because i you know you're balancing this idea of like books being like a physical sort of thing um made of paper and like the the harm that that caused but that being like the thing that's the entire thing so that idea of like contending with it individually and like aligning your morals and values with like your consumeristic habits i think it's important and i think also that's kind of why i started looking at my own collection because my like i think i said it earlier but my thing was like okay don't think about the collection that you want for the now but the collection that you want forever like this is something that's going to stay with you and are there books that you're going to reread until they fall apart are there things that you would want to pass on to future hypothetical children or things of that nature like a book that is feels really curated to be with me for the long haul like that's what i want and that's kind of how i think about you know curbing you know this idea of just buying every book ever and ones that i'm never even going to read and then having to deal with how i'm going to unhaul or get rid of these and making it very specific to books that i know that i'm going to own in my lifetime and pass on to others afterwards so yeah like on a personal level like i the reason i mostly read ebooks first and then buy like a physical book is because of the environment because like i also don't eat meat because i know that impacts the environment and that's me personally trying to do the most that i can do but like from the publishing perspective they are having discussions about it because they do know like just for like brand awareness it's probably better for them to look like they're green like thinking about how they can make the process more green but also we're impacted by all the environmental stuff happening we're having print shortages and can't print enough books because of everything that's been happening and i feel like that's another reason like the industry is looking at itself because it realizes it can't sustain itself at the rate is going um somebody said that earlier in the chat they were talking about supporting indie romance pub publishing authors on um amazon and what we think about that always support your indie authors i love their hustle i love that they get to keep all their money like yes i'm here for it i don't really read a lot of like indie books in general just because i'm trying to like keep up with what trad pub is doing especially if i eventually want to move to editorial i have to keep track of what everybody's doing but i do support the hustle and i know a couple indie authors and i'm like go buy their books guys yeah i think like obviously people like we we want to like a lot of us want to get away from amazon as much as possible but it's like again like figuring out what where the everything kind of fits in with what you want to support and how that like aligns with what you you personally believe it's like well like i cannot divest 100 from amazon is this gonna be one of the things that i like compromise on where i'm like okay at the end of the day i'm also supporting an indie author like i feel good about that like it's it's it's a mixed bag like we're you're never gonna feel like you're 100 like getting everything you want but like and like maybe like you also come out of that and you're like i still don't feel like i can buy from amazon i think that's fine too it's like a thing that you have to like figure out yeah i think everybody's different that as i said it's like a double-edged sword when it comes to amazon because on the one hand we know amazon is like evil but on the other hand it's like there are instances where you kind of need it's the only option right especially for authors who publish exclusively through um you know kindle publishing or whatnot you know so i mean there are places as you said the bookie where you could compromise i think um and i think if the only way you could support sits in authors is through buying their books on amazon and you want to support them i don't think there's anything wrong if it is that you would you know you know be specific about what you're doing with amazon so just because you're supporting the authors don't mean that you're buying every single thing else from amazon you know yeah i think that's part of like that what we're talking about bringing nuance to this conversation always because it's not as simple as amazon is evil that's it like shut it down because you know you have these conversations and you just know certain authors are like sweating bullets because they're like hey this is how you know think of the children um but so yeah it's not that easy and i'm somebody who really loves like kindle like romance books and i i i partake you know what i mean so i it's like a balance for me of like thinking where i can divest from amazon and until there is a different solution there are places that i can't divest from amazon so yeah and that is gonna be constantly changing and it's not so easy as having this conversation today where we know that in like six months things could change and things could be completely different so it's constantly engaging in this conversation and like reevaluating and seeing what is right for that moment sort of thing do publishers uh do undisclosed sponsored posts on ig youtube twitter with booktubers i don't think that's what's going on two different questions that's not my route uh no so you have to disclose whenever you're doing a sponsored post and this isn't where language um i think in the community gets kind of um a little hazy because some people will say like i'm working with the publisher and you don't really know what that means and so it might be that the publisher just sent them like a free book but there was no money exchange there or it might be that there was money exchange and that video that you're watching is a product of some the publisher paying a certain dollar amount for that for that partnership in that video but in that case that must be disclosed you can't you can't have secret deals um i think like there's also like hashtags and stuff now like specifically you have to use you can't use like shorthand abbreviations or anything anymore legal is very clear to me that i need to disclose that i work for a company if i'm ever going to talk about our books so i've just put that in all of my descriptions like you're really cracking down on that kind of stuff now that's good yeah i would suggest talking about the investment that comes with collecting books but i feel like that's a whole last game of worms like the rune editions of the shadowhunter books being way expensive now rune edition you can tell massage it does not read this series it's basic white red um yeah i i've been thinking about this so much because i look at the books that i'm unhauling and i start doing the math of like how much money is represented there and i'm like my lord like i i did this so yeah i mean and that's why this this conversation can be so touchy is because it's just not a book there's like a monetary value assigned there um and then i have things like multiple copies of books that i love or special editions of books and all of that is an investment and is an investment i guess because books do have a resale value um i don't know because that's a whole other kind of can of worms but uh yeah that that is why i think this conversation is so touchy is because it is all about money and we're talking about like you know an investment of things here yeah i saw a tweet a couple of days ago about there's like a book that's coming out that's a special 10th anniversary edition or whatever and the person was commenting like this author gets more money for the special edition the publishers put money behind this book but what about a marginalized author that could have been published with that money instead and that's like i'm not precious about having like fancy editions of books like once it's a like copy of it and i loved it i don't care but yeah i just think about that aspect of it when i'm thinking about collecting books like do i really need to encourage them printing like three editions of the same book just because they know he's going to make money so what do you guys do with the books that you unhaul i think um sajid kind of already mentioned taking them to used bookstores and things like that but what else do you give to friends i give i give mostly i have a lot of friends i actually don't take to the used bookstores like i um what i do is i tell myself i'm going to donate all these books at the library and then i get so lazy that i don't ever go to the library so i take all the books i carry them to my university i put them on a table and i write a note free books to take enjoy that that's like how i've unhauled like half of the books i've ever hold otherwise i just give away to friends um the other day i i gave to some one of my viewers from down here who lives here i asked if she wanted any books i gave her so it's just the front i sometimes i donate to the library it just depends on like what i feel like doing the and the easiest most convenient way to just get them out yeah i donate most of mine and then like i have a shelf in my apartment that is literally for my friends when they come over i'm like here are the books that i no longer need you can take anything from the shelf and that's how i get things like out of my apartment i thought i was gonna sell some like i was like oh i have all these books like because i was so worried about like the financial investment thing that i was like i'll just like on depop or something i'll sell them and i put one book up and it's sold and i'm like i have to go to the post office maybe i don't want to do this but for the most part i do donate i do give to friends and then somebody mentioned um that booknet fest is a like a book exchange every year so i always have just like a stack of books that i can go and take there that somebody else is going to enjoy and i've taken books to like bea and anytime i'm like at a book event i'm like i know someone is going to want these books so i i try to give them away as well yeah i remember sam brought like a suitcase to y'all fest one year yes she just tweeted and we sat there while people were like um i think we're getting close to the end devotee's like i need my beer did not prepare she'll just had them all in a line um i'm just here with my water listen you're staying hydrated that's great i think we're getting close to the end i love my library love to see it um so books and lala mentioned to like local women's shelters always looking for book donations we also have like a program and i know a lot of different states do it kind of individual individually where you can donate to local prison systems as well which is something that i've done before and i know that alex who was in the chat earlier has done as well um so yeah there are a ton of different ways that you can donate books um that people are are very appreciative of and my local library too i'm like hey do you want these books and they're always like yes so i think that's it all right um we did it an hour and 40 minutes worth of feelings and people never gonna talk about it again it's all over guys it's time we just did capitalism you know like it's done solve it if anybody ever brings this up again you can't you gotta be like shut it down link them this video um yeah thank you guys for joining us so many of you guys stuck around for the whole time i really appreciate it you guys were having a great conversation in the comments as well and um maybe we'll do this again i'm asking you in front of everybody like holding you hostage like we'll do this again right yeah yeah sure i'm always here good night guys bye everybody bye

Channel: mynameismarines

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Id: qX3_-dxSuRA

Length: 98min 38sec (5918 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020